Opening Phase of Havenite war

Silverwall wrote:I also believe most of the immediate online defenses were actually stationed on the massive orbital stations that were the first target of the Oyster bay strike.

tlb wrote:I expect that, while all battle stations are not manned, there is still a watch crew in place and systems are ready. This is similar to what happened to Rob S. Pierre's son, who made an alpha transition into energy of an SD and was blow away by a very junior officer. Do you have text saying that I am wrong and you are right, or do we leave this question as unresolved?

Silverwall wrote:The text evidence is based on a segment describing the attack where RFC mentions that if they had any amount of warning they could have raised sidewalls and blunted most of the attack on the stations. Sadly they did not have the 30 seconds that the Comm officer on the Belerophon had when Pierre Jr emerged in front of them.

Yes, that certainly described the orbitals that were destroyed by the Oyster Bay attack. However we were talking about the presence of hypothetical forts at the time of SVW. Hephaestus is a shipyard, passenger terminal and all sorts of things (including the site of much of Manticore's industry); what it is not is a purely defensive fortification and its sidewalls and weapons are for self-defense (although that could contribute some to planetary defense).

Silverwall wrote:By this time the podnought revolution had dramatically reduced the value of fixed fortifications so many/most of them were scrapped by the time of oyster bay. I would observe that you keep supporting your arguments with technology and doctorine that was not even thought of 20 years earlier at the start of these wars.

Even if they did have them the suprise there was total and forts would not have been able to get online in time and by the time they were most of the debris was able to be snagged using less extreme measures. The actual strike of oyster bay was less than 10 minutes and defensed that close to the planets were designed with at least a few hours of spin up time available.

The last reference to forts was during the run up to BOM. So I doubt they scrapped them in the months after that.

I suspect what happened to them was what happened to Talbot. The author forgot about them.

"If something had to be exposed, cold logic said Gryphon was a better choice than the other two planets, and the Admiralty had compensated as best it could by assigning the buildup of Manticore-B's fixed defenses a higher priority than Manticore-A's. In fact, Manticore-B's forts and space station were already refitting with Keyhole II and would begin deploying the first of the system-defense Apollo pods within the next three weeks, on the theory that it would need them worse since it couldn't call as readily on Home Fleet's protection."

The subject line is Opening Phase of Havenite war.

OPENING Phase.
Without the advantge of 20/20 hindsight but with the knowlege of what PRH had been doing up to the point they launched the ACTIVE campaign against SKM, you have to consider what they were doing vs what they had done in the past.

Clearly, the only way Haven is going to win against Manticore is by eliminating Manticore's ability to fight. Ultimately that means occupying the Manticore System and forcing the Queen to surrender.

Why did they not go right at the Manticore Home System? Because that wasn't the way things were being do tacticaly and stratigicly AT THAT TIME. Other than the attempt to wrest Basilisk- the system, not the terminus- away from Manticore, Haven had been manuvering to place forward logistics and fleet support bases close enough to Manticore to continue the chain of expansion and conquest based on the perception of logistic options available to them.

Also why the whole problem and chess game with Masada & Grayson. Location, location location.
What Manticore did later- during the war- in deep strikes was to deny Haven the logistics and support at those system even if it was to cripple any PRHN ships and destroy the logistics and supply facilities. Haven didn't see itself as being able to project enough force forward to take the Manticore Home System without first destroying a large percentage of the RMN in it's out-system bases and prevent the RMN from gathering to consolidate it's power. Yes RMN is out in Silesia. It's also at the Gergor Terminus, Basilisk, Matapan etc. We presume there are ships at the other termini.
Then there is the Home Fleet which is often broken into two pieces (covering both of the binary stars) and the component which is out at the Junction. And there are the forts, both around at least the Junction and in the Home Systems


Remember that Haven had already taken San Martin...but they didn't have the ability to force transit of military ships through it. Well, they might be able to but 1st they have to drive off any RMN force (or destroy it) at the SM end and take effective control of the Junction. At that point they could use the Junction to pour ships and supplies through to the Junction to support fighting in the Binary System and guarantee that nobody comes though the Junction till the matter is "resolved".

What they did do is go after RMN and members of the Manticorian Alliance to cut down the RNM (and Allied naval support) with an eye to using those positions as new forward basing.

Will Manticore call on the SL.....they don't think so. From what we see LATER ON IN THE SERIES, both Haven and Manticore have a fair idea of what "inviting" the SLN into the politics and actual fighting/conquests going on in the Haven Quadrant.
The price would be massive. That would be if there was enough time to (and you actualy attempted to) negotiate with the SL/OFS etc, which would also mean that the SL is going to charge a large piece of the action and that will include- probably- the loss of independence such as we see with the OFS Sector Gov at Meyers and it still living monarchy. All but a puppet government.

What options do Haven have before they start the Havenite War and the process of attrition of RMN's capability and capturing what would clearly become forward logistics points?

Taking a major portion of the RHN and going right for Manticore is more risky than what they did. Sure, they could have sent smaller forces (in absolute numbers) against various Allied systems and RMN bases to destroy what was possible and then try and hold them against counter attack.
The problem always becomes: can Haven successfully attack the Binary System and beat it's way to Manticore orbit through the Home Fleet and demand Elizabeth's surrender. If they get that.....war over. Oh, it will be messy afterwards, but if Elizabeth surrenders and commands the RMN to stand down and turn over it's ships, things are done. What about the fleet commands out at the various termini? Well, if they are hit in some sort of timely sesquesce (like was done with a much better RHN when the Truce was broken) then it is possible that along with damaging or destroying a bunch of warships, the path back through the Junction from serveral detachments and all those patroling ships would be cut off except though long hyperspace voyages. At that point RMN is faces with all the problems of what are they going to find when they come out of hyperspace by the Binary System and what can they do? What is waiting for them and what kind of attack can they make.
If the system has surrendered it over. If Haven captures the Queen then it will get an order from her out through the Junction for all RMN forces to lay down their arms and surrender.

If Haven commits 80% of it's Wall plus support to hitting the Home System---and does't take it really quickly, it is going to be in quite a bad position. Not only would you expect that Haven getting beaten out of the Home System would involve A LOT of losses and damage to it's fleet, they have a LONG way to go to where they can get resupply/repairs etc.

IF Haven wasn't abl to at the same time cripple/destry a significant number of RMN which were elcewhere than the Home System at the same time, suddenly the "survivors" of the Haven fleets are going to be running back to attempt to defend at least the Haven System and some others.

Haven plans on smashing SKM in a conventional tactical and strategic fight to possibley get Manticore to sue for or at least negotiate a peace and accept occupation. Break their ships and take away their bashing/alliances and keep hemming SKM in till it submits.

You know, like what happens when Haven - in desperation after SEM has things like Apollo and those CLACs and a growing numerical edge and Haven goes for Manticore directly because they have put themselver in a position of getting smashed and their Home System taken --and very little in the way of potential depth of either RH systems or formations that would be able to stand (or in the case of a lot of systems want to stand) before the SEM's moving to checkmate.

kzt wrote:The last reference to forts was during the run up to BOM. So I doubt they scrapped them in the months after that.

I suspect what happened to them was what happened to Talbot. The author forgot about them.

So they were present for Oyster Bay, but might not have been that useful against debris. The tugs were vaporizing chunks with their wedges, but the forts might not be mobile enough for that. They could not try grasers, because there is too many friendlies about and breaking massive chunks into a bigger spread of very large chunks is not helpful.

But any forts as of SVW would have been scrapped and replaced in order to get the manpower reduction from increased automation, the FTL communication and the newer missiles.

A CM would work just fine. It hits a big piece of debris with it's 15km? wide wedge and vaporizes as the wedge overloads after chewing away part of the object. Same thing with PDLC's They are not terribly powerful as anti-ship weapons, but at 5000km they are both extremely destructive against debris and extraordinarily accurate as they are expected to hit a 5 meter target at >0.6C at over a light second.

And forts would have a LOT of CMs and PDLCs.

Odds are that a fort wouldn't have it's wedge up, but it would more likely have the bubble sidewall up.

kzt wrote:A CM would work just fine. It hits a big piece of debris with it's 15km? wide wedge and vaporizes as the wedge overloads after chewing away part of the object. Same thing with PDLC's They are not terribly powerful as anti-ship weapons, but at 5000km they are both extremely destructive against debris and extraordinarily accurate as they are expected to hit a 5 meter target at >0.6C at over a light second.

And forts would have a LOT of CMs and PDLCs.

Odds are that a fort wouldn't have it's wedge up, but it would more likely have the bubble sidewall up.

CM's still have to be aimed to avoid friendlies in the area. Do they self destruct at the end of flight, assuming they are not destroyed by contact with a target? Or do you need to worry about what is down range? Can their speed be dialed back to allow maneuvers?

A PDLC could have the same problem of breaking huge chunks into a dispersion of large chunks that can impact. They are intended to disable a target, not to vaporize it.

A fort in its bubble sidewall has almost no mobility.

kzt wrote:A CM would work just fine. It hits a big piece of debris with it's 15km? wide wedge and vaporizes as the wedge overloads after chewing away part of the object. Same thing with PDLC's They are not terribly powerful as anti-ship weapons, but at 5000km they are both extremely destructive against debris and extraordinarily accurate as they are expected to hit a 5 meter target at >0.6C at over a light second.

And forts would have a LOT of CMs and PDLCs.

Odds are that a fort wouldn't have it's wedge up, but it would more likely have the bubble sidewall up.

I would be surprised if any forts were within 5,000km of the stations. Speculative, but for examples geosynchronous orbit is 35,000km above Earth's surface and the moon is nearly 400,000km out. In the era of laser-heads, they would probably want to orbit at least ~100,000km above the surface to provide a thicker PDLC blanket against hypothetical missiles coming towards their planet.

Since the stations were obviously in a relatively low orbit(or debris wouldn't have impacted the surface so quickly), sheer distance explains why forts couldn't intervene with PDLCs.

After a certain distance, CMs are too quick-accelerating to be shooting through a disaster zone. And the lightspeed control lag could easily cause problems even at ranges as low as half a light-second.

munroburton wrote:Since the stations were obviously in a relatively low orbit(or debris wouldn't have impacted the surface so quickly), sheer distance explains why forts couldn't intervene with PDLCs.

After a certain distance, CMs are too quick-accelerating to be shooting through a disaster zone. And the lightspeed control lag could easily cause problems even at ranges as low as half a light-second.

Though you'd think the huge numbers of LACS they house could...

And it's very unclear how high the stations are. Given that, in a world of 500g shuttles and antigrav trucks that haul massive loads into orbit, they are said to be too far for people to routinely commute to work?

IF they are a few thousand KM up then why does anyone live in the very expensive, tiny quarters and tightly controlled stations when they could spend 30 minutes commuting and live anywhere on Manticore?

Forts in in either of the binary star systems would have been placed with stratigic and tactical view, relative to the inhabited planets and various fabrication and baseing locations. The forts, by the time of Oyster Bay, would be the ones with the MDM capability plus LACs and are probably shifting locations relative to what they are tasked to defend.Not all that close at all as they could be regularly need to move- under their own massive impellers- for station keeping and Manticore wasn't letting live impelleres near the stations etc. Not close enough to the stations and yards to probably do anything as far as using impeller wedges against the debris from the destroyed stations and other facilites in the planetary orbits. They would first have to get down closer to the gravity well and since we don't have an idea where they were stationed there is little to use to calculate when they could have gotten there.

That the forts in-system are not mentioned (that I remember) relative to Oyster Bay or that any of them were targets or being hit in the strikes is probably because they were mobil and not in the targeting queues for OB. Like warships in temporary parking orbits well off the stations, they could not be counted on to be where the scouting had them at the last pass before the ballistic weapons were sent in.
We know that things like many (not all) the Grayson Style dispursed shipyards were targeted but that was because they were parked in what amounted to perminant locations for building ships due to the logistics of getting materials, parts and the work crews to them so they were not only parked but had been fairly hot broadcasting targets while the ships were still in the slips while being worked on with all the traffic to and from their locations.
The forts, however, need to shift relative to what they are defending and those things are moving, ususaly in orbits either near the inhabited planets. You put the forts to block the most probable attach approach based on celestial mechanics of the system, including where the two stars are, the Junction, the planets in their orbits etc.
Since OB had limited weapons/delivery systems and it appears that, except for the Graser Torpedoes with spider drives, everything had to come in ballistic and without impellers to keep from alerting every sensor in the system that something (hundreds of things) was in inbound. You might be able to predict where the forts could be shifted with enough analysis of their movements over time but exactly when they would move is a different story. In the long run, you could expect to waste the majority of the ballistic weapons sent after the forts if they moved even a few km from there they were in the final sensor analysis that was crunched to upload for the ballistic releases of the weapons.
You are also talking about hitting something at least as massive as an SD with perhaps better armor so it would probably take multiple hits to do signicant damage.

The Alignment didn't have the weapons to spare.

kzt wrote:

Silverwall wrote:There is a lot of 20/20 hindsight in these responses. I have been critical of RFC's worldbuilding at times but in this case the justification for the behaviour of the Havenites was very realistic given the history he is modelling.

Part of this is that we go from warfare that is analagous to the limited warfare of the Louis XIV era. Where you fight for limited objectives while being diplomatic to the big players. 5 years later we have changed to modern total war thinking. But they DO NOT have a total war attitude at the start of hostilities and an opening strike at the Manticore system is very much total war thinking.

To those saying just do it anyway if your navy is not set up for deep deployments then your in a situation similar to the Wehrmacht sitting on the channel coast going... "how do we cross that?" you just don't have the resources, structures or doctrine to do it.

I’m saying they had no end game. They have no way of winning a prolonged war of attrition unless the SKM leadership decides that today is the day we and our families get shot by the peeps.

The league did not need to capture Manticore, they could have used this as an excuse to grab the junction in the name of maintaining free trade and leave Manticore to the mercy of Haven. It would still be a win for Haven because they get manticore and it’s industry even without the junction while the league gets the junction without having to del with manticore as a member of the league